Southland's remote Waitutu district is considered by many to hold the finest spread of native lowland forest in the country. From shoreline to treeline, a diverse range of forest types unfurl their branches across 500 square kilometres of misty ridges which eventually merge with the harsher mountains of fiordland. The subject of fierce conservation battles in the 1980s and '90s, all of Waitutu has now been given formal protection from logging: an ancient wilderness saved.